workers using air drill - road construction - ladakh (india)

Workers are using pneumatic drill or jackhammer to make holes for dynamite sticks, to blast rocks to widen the Srinagar-Leh Highway in Ladakh.­ The technique is known as Drilling and Blasting.­

National Highway 1 (NH 1), also known as Srinagar-Leh Highway, is a National Highway entirely within the state of Jammu & Kashmir in North India that connects Srinagar to Leh in Ladakh and is maintained by Project Vijayak of the Border Roads Organisation.­ It is one of the only two roads that connect Ladakh with the rest of India, the other being Leh-Manali Highway.­ The Srinagar-Leh Highway was declared as National Highway in 2006.­

Ladakh is a remote and sparsely populated region in the north-eastern most part of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, that is subject to ongoing territorial disputes between India and Pakistan and with distinct cultural influences and historical ties to Tibet.­

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